The Sandinista Syndrome

Published: July 27, 1991

Nicaragua's Sandinista Front still fails to digest the lessons of its 1990 political defeat, judging by its recent congress. Sadly, the Sandinistas would rather bury their heads in the sands of an obsolete ideology than honorably adapt to the responsibilities of democracy.

The congress reinstalled essentially the same leadership of former guerrilla commanders that was rejected by voters last year. And while the front dropped explicit references to Marxism-Leninism from its official positions, it reaffirmed its vocation as a revolutionary vanguard, entitled to speak for the peasant and worker masses whether or not those masses agree.

The affairs of an out-of-power party are not usually of wide concern. But the Sandinistas are still Nicaragua's largest political force, with strength in the army, police, parliament and unions. Democracy cannot ripen with so strong a party hedging its democratic commitments.

The latest developments conform to a familiar Sandinista pattern. The party has always contained a more or less democratically minded faction as well as a rigidly Leninist leadership group. Usually the ideologues prevail.

The party's decision last year to accept the election results raised hopes that the democratic faction had at last gained the upper hand -- and that the Sandinistas might unambiguously democratize their ways. After all, the ideologues who once claimed history was on their side must cope with an overwhelmingly adverse global trend.

Not only has the Nicaraguan version of Leninism been abandoned by much of its original constituency but its main foreign inspirations no longer inspire. Fidel Castro's Cuba, for example, now slips embarrassingly deeper into poverty and stagnation.

Even so, the Sandinista ideologues maintained their grip, chiefly by stage-managing the congress's leadership election. Other Nicaraguans of all persuasions can hope their triumph will prove as brief as it is hollow.